Mark Dunn - Under the Harrow

“And are you saying that this kind of climate could be of benefit to us?”

“Maybe in the short run. Openings get created. Opportunities suddenly present themselves. The members of the Fortnightly Poetry League can certainly speak to that. But these chinks could also serve as a wakeup call for Flatiron to go get themselves a much bigger pail of Spackle. Look, I have to go.”

“Go. Be safe.”

“I’ll do my best.”

Lord Mayor Feenix was the last to arrive. The mayor of Milltown and Health Minister of Dingley Dell was a man in his middle years who compensated for his diminutive stature through daily stints with the dumbbells, the medicine ball, and the Indian clubs. The result of this rigourous exercise regimen was a thick muscularity that gave the mayor a brutish, bulldog look, marked by a wide, full neck, and limbs that seemed more muttonish than human.

The Bulldog surveyed the faces of those gathered within the woodpaneled room that served as convening place for the Administrative and Advisory Board of Bethlehem Hospital upon Highbury Fields (the informal appellation “Bedlam” never being uttered between these dignified walls). He gave deferent nods both to his equals and to his inferiors as he took his place at the top of the conference table.

“Good evening, gentlemen, and a good evening to you as well, Miss Wolf,” said Feenix in a voice that was two parts croak and one part glottal abrasion. “I understand, madam, that your presence has been requested for a very important purpose that we shall take up shortly. Ah, Sir Dabber, yours is an old and warmly familiar visage. I’m curious to know what brings our senior-most emeritus member to this table after so long an absence. I am, however, even more curious to know why you’ve brought Mr. Trimmers along with you. Is there a piece for that scandal-mongering Delver that its favourite reporter wishes to write, perhaps on the subject of the recondite workings of our mysterious organisation? For if such be the case, I must caution the gentleman against pursuing it. Perhaps he isn’t aware that there exists an embargo against the publication of any of the particulars of our confidential proceedings.”

“Mr. Trimmers doesn’t wish to write about Bethlehem, Lord Mayor,” interposed Sir Dabber, whilst patting a handkerchief against his freshly perspiring forehead. “I have engaged him to indite minutes of this meeting for the purpose of retaining a permanent and official — albeit private — record of our proceedings.”

“I see,” piped Lord Mayor Feenix, nearly grinning. “Now what do we think of that, Dr. Towlinson?”

Dr. Towlinson did not think much of it at all: “We’ve never had need of a permanent record before. The idea is ludicrous.” The doctor’s tone was sharp, his manner defensive.

Sir Dabber turned to face the hospital administrator who sat to his right. “Ludicrous, Dr. Towlinson? To do that which the Petit-Parliament has itself been doing for the last one hundred years? If this body purports to have any legitimacy whatsoever, then let a written record document its proceedings.”

“Do you think our memories are going, Dabber,” retorted Towlinson, “that we should not be able to recall what is discussed at these meetings?”

“It is not simply what is discussed, Towlinson, but what is being planned and schemed and brought to fruition to the detriment of this institution and its inmates. I want the record to clearly shew who is responsible for every decision made here.” Dabber sat back in his chair and folded his arms across his ample belly.

“I am without words!” ejaculated Dr. Fibbetson in a sudden, horrified swoon.

“Notify the press,” riposted Dabber, “for that is something worthy of publication.”

There was a bit of laughter about the room that could not be helped. Even Chairman Feenix smiled at Fibbetson’s expense. Sir Dabber continued, “By the bye, Dr. Towlinson, Frederick Trimmers is an excellent stenographer — perhaps the best in the Dell.”

“Mr. Trimmers is also an agitator,” opined the head of Bedlam, bending his dark gaze full upon me.

“He is no more agitator than you or I,” countered my defender with an even more assiduous application of the handkerchief to his wet brow. “Moreover, gentlemen, I was once the chairman of this hospital board and can say that in my lengthy tenure there was much greater attendance given to institutional openness than I see now. The place is now become a castle keep of concealment and huggery-muggery. And as this is a publiclyfunded asylum, I, for one, will no longer brook the argument that what takes place here is not the business of every citizen in the Dell.”

“A rather stunning indictment, Sir Dabber, if I may say so,” pronounced the Lord Mayor, leaning back and locking and then unlocking the muscular fingers of his muscular paws in a thoughtfully amused manner. Several heads within the room nodded in staunch agreement — these heads belonging to the four other men present besides Dr. Towlinson and the medical mal-practitioner Egbert Fibbetson: three M.P.P.’s of inconsequential supernumerary status, and the eminently redoubtable Judge Fitz-Marshall. Those keeping their heads in dissenting abeyance were Sir Dabber, his exigently-enlisted amanuensis Frederick Trimmers, and the intrepid Ruth Wolf, who at this moment was about the business of sedulously avoiding my look, lest anyone in the room read complicity in our familiar glances.

Ruth feigned a casual air that only thinly mantled her true feelings of trepidation. For she knew as well as did I that there must be some dire reason for her summoned presence here, and the longer she was made to wait to hear what it was, the harder it would be to bear the suspense.

“Yet,” responded Sir Dabber to the Lord Mayor’s flyaway characterisation of his explanation, “there is too much that has taken place in this hospital as of late about which the public has been kept purposefully uninformed. I take up, first, the matter of the egregious relegation of some of our most needful inmates to deplorable quarters within the cellar.”

Dr. Towlinson scarcely gave Dabber time to finish his charge before putting forth his defence: “The refurbishing of the upstairs rooms obviously took longer than had been anticipated, but you should be glad to know that the renovation will soon be complete, and that all of the inmates who have been kept below-stairs in temporary quarters will, in fact, be removed to more suitable rooms shortly. And surely, Sir Dabber, you know that you need only have asked, and better transient accommodations would have been promptly arranged for your son. It was your choice and your choice alone not to pursue the matter, your having put the boy largely out of sight and out of mind for yea these ten years past.”

Upon this allegation of parental neglect (and the rather flippant and disrespectful manner in which it was tossed out), Sir Dabber leapt to his feet with both fists doubled up. “Mendacity!” he thundered.

I who was seated on the other side of him now rose to calm and quell his erupting anger. Others about the room got quickly to their own feet, desirous, apparently, of not being fixed to a chair should there be hurlings of fists and other things made rudely airborne. As Sir Dabber did not, in fine, do much more than simply repeat the word “mendacity” in a tone that would put it amongst the most insulting of epithets, it was easy for me to get him back into his seat and by extension the rest of the Board members to return to their own berths about the table. Ruth Wolf, for her part, did not rise but, instead, receded slightly into her chair as if wishing to disappear altogether.